Two
astronauts in Earth orbit are settling into the International Space Station
(ISS) for what they expect to be a busy six-month spaceflight.

ISS Expedition
13 commander Pavel Vinogradov and flight engineer Jeffrey Williams are
completing their first full week in charge of orbital laboratory since arriving
at the station on April 1. They relieved the station’s former tenants
– Expedition
12 commander Bill McArthur and flight engineer Valery Tokarev – who
had concluded their own six-month mission.

“We’re
settling in very well,” Williams told SPACE.com Thursday during a
space-to-ground linkup. “We had a good handover
with Bill and Valery, they left the station in very good shape.”

McArthur
and Tokarev returned
to Earth on April 8 with Brazil’s first astronaut Marcos
Pontes, who launched
toward the ISS with the Expedition 13 crew on March 29.

A quick
match

While most
ISS crews train together for years before launching into space, changes in crew
rotation plans gave Williams – who originally trained to command a
station flight and served as McArthur’s Expedition 12 backup – and
Vinogradov about seven months to mesh as a crew.

“It
was a scramble,” said Williams, a U.S. Army colonel, from orbit last week during a video
exchange with U.S. Army officials. “Pavel and I did not know each other
very well.”

NASA
officials said Williams’ shift to Expedition 13 occurred after shuttle
launch delays in Fall 2005 pushed the agency’s next
ISS-bound orbiter flightwell into 2006. The reassignment allowed
future ISS crewmembers who have trained for specific ISS spacewalk or assembly
tasks to be matched with their expected workload, NASA said.

Williams
said he cut short his October vacation plans to train with Vinogradov and
ensure the success of Expedition 13.

“Like
a good Army soldier, I think all of us in the program currently and
historically are trained to stand up and do as we’re asked,” he
said.

In the
meantime, NASA’s Discovery shuttle is expected to visit the ISS during
the STS-121
orbiter flight in July. Williams and Vinogradov hope to then welcome an
addition to their mission, European Space Agency astronaut Thomas
Reiter, who will return the station crew complement to its regular
three-person crew size for the first time since the 2003 Columbia accident.

“We’re
very much looking forward to his arrival,” Williams said Thursday of
Reiter. “We’ve got a place on our patch where we can add his name,
too.”

Two
spacewalks and a second shuttle visit – STS-115 aboard Atlantis, which
includes the installation of a new set of solar arrays outside the ISS –
are also scheduled during the Expedition 13 mission.

Space
station veteran

Despite the
late crew change, the Expedition 13 astronauts are both experienced space
flyers.

That goes
double for Vinogradov, who learned the art of pacing himself after 198 days in
space aboard Russia’s Mir
Space Station during his Expedition 24 flight between August 1997 and February
1998.

“In a
short duration flight, you can grin and bear it since it’s not that long,
you can take it,” Vinogradov said before the Expedition 13 launch.
“But in a long-term flight, things like fatigue and irritability arise.
Knowing that beforehand and counteracting those things is where experience
comes in.”

A native of
Magadan, Russia and father of a 12-year-old daughter, Vinogradov joined the
Federal Space Agency’s cosmonaut ranks in 1992 after years of service
with the country’s Head Design Bureau RSC Energia, where his wife also
works. But becoming a cosmonaut was not something he initially thought
achievable.

“At
the time, I thought that I was not worthy of becoming an astronaut because
astronauts and cosmonauts had special qualities that I didn’t have,”
Vinogradov, 52, said before his flight, adding that it was only after working
alongside actual space flyers that he gained confidence. “I saw that I
could do their job as good as them, potentially, and that gave me the courage
to write up an application in 1982.”

The delay
between his initial application at Energia and acceptance was prolonged by
Russia’s Buran
shuttle program, since officials wanted him to wait until the orbiter was
ready to fly. It was only after the Buran program was scrapped that Vinogradov
reached space.

A worthy
endeavor

Vinogradov
said Thursday that despite its complexity, human spaceflight is a worthy
endeavor not just for individual nations, but the world at large.

“Today
it doesn’t really matter whose country sends their citizens into
space,” Vinogradov told SPACE.com. “It’s an
achievement for all humankind.”

“It’s
very symbolic that on the same day, roads have started that eventually merged
into one road, and I believe this is the road we’re traveling now, the
International Space Station,” he added.

Astronaut
Army colonel

Williams,
48, is making his second trip to space after a 10-day trip to the ISS in May
2000 aboard NASA’s Atlantis orbiter during the STS-101
mission.

“The
flight, I’ve concluded, is the easy part,” Williams said before launch,
adding that the more than three years of spaceflight training has been the
hardest challenge on himself, his wife Anna-Marie and family. “It’s
a continually difficult thing to do. You’re continuously jetlagged and
there’s a feeling of isolation. It’s very challenging and stressful
on families, and I’ve learned a lot through the experience.”

A father of
two grown sons, ages 24 and 21, Williams hails from the small town of Winter,
Wisconsin – where his parents Lloyd and Eunice still reside – and
took a piece of home with him when he launched into orbit.

“They
just celebrated their 100th centennial year and they produced a little booklet
on the town, I brought one of those booklets to fly and then return to the
town,” Williams said, adding that he also took photographs from
Winter’s early days that have ties to his own family.

Reading
– and having – The Right Stuff

The seed
that grew into William’s astronaut career was planted while he was a U.S.
Army cadet at West Point, where he learned the Army had pilots and joined the
sport parachute team. But it was author Tom Wolfe’s spaceflight treatise The
Right Stuff that set Williams on the astronaut path.

“I
don’t know why, but I read that book and I learned about test flight and
the history of the astronaut program and that’s when I set it as a
lifetime goal,” Williams said. “I did not like the movie, but I
loved the book.”

Williams
said he’s looking forward to the next six months in orbit, but for the
near-term will settle for making his own imprint on the space station.

“When
you move into a new place…there’s always some thing you want to do
to tailor it for yourself,” he said Thursday. “That’s what
we’ve been doing in our spare time.”